While peer-reviewed journals remain an essential resource, faculty and students are depending on a wide variety of content types, including primary sources, dissertations, videos and more for success in research and teaching. That was the conclusion of a recent ProQuest survey that offers insight into the reasons why today’s academic community looks beyond journals for information. In March, ProQuest surveyed more than

1,300 faculty and students around the globe to better understand the value they find in using various types of content. Responses reveal that access to varied content types generates better student research and learning outcomes. Primary sources play a particularly enriching role in learning. One faculty respondent said: ‘A single exposure to a handwritten text – even electronically – can be an inspiring experience for students, taking them out of their comfort zone and into unfamiliar material, people and language.’ Other key findings from the ProQuest survey include:

• Faculty members believe a student’s use of a wide variety of content types aids their understanding of topics, contributes to better grades, and allows for a more thorough review of existing literature and research findings.

• Faculty members encourage the use of primary sources, believing they help students develop critical thinking skills.

• Students are influenced by their professors’ recommendations when choosing content to use in their research and assignments.

These findings present opportunities for libraries to introduce students to the wide variety of materials faculty are recommending. ‘This survey underscores that

ProQuest’s comprehensive content strategy maps well to librarian, faculty and student research expectations,’ said Jim Holmes, ProQuest senior vice president, global sales and marketing. ‘We work with librarians around the world to help them identify resource options that enable students and faculty to achieve the best outcomes.’

president of research metrics and product management at Elsevier, said: ‘CiteScore Metrics were launched in 2016 in response to academia’s call for metrics that offer a broader, more transparent view of journal performance. As is the case for any metric, it takes time to build up familiarity and set new standards, and it’s a journey – a journey we are on with the entire academic community as new perspectives on research evaluation are formed.’ With free access to CiteScore Metrics’ underlying data, values can be recalculated by anyone, offering transparency to researchers, publishers and the wider academic community. All document types in Scopus are counted in the calculation of the CiteScore Metrics, which are part of a collection of research metrics available. Other metrics include journal, author, institutional and article- level metrics captured in PlumX Metrics (covering citations, social media mentions and coverage in mainstream media), to support a holistic view of research performance. Andrew Plume, director of

market intelligence at Elsevier, added: ‘Our basket of metrics concept underscores the two golden rules of research evaluation: always use both quantitative and qualitative indicators side-by-side and, when choosing quantitative indicators, always use more than one.’